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Farmer Management Solutions John O’Bryan/USAIDJohn Fa rmer Management Solutions FARMER MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS The Challenge The Solution Due to COVID-19 restrictions prohibiting face-to-face Farmer groups are leveraging farmer management meetings and other information-sharing channels, solutions to facilitate digital communication agriculture market actors have experienced challenges in between members, dispel misinformation and the quality and flow of information to their various farmer disinformation, share updates on market and groups and cooperatives. Challenges include sharing timely border closures, and more. These solutions have and accurate updates to help combat misinformation and also helped farmers distribute emergency food disinformation, providing advice on reliable sources for assistance, access financial services, aggregate assistance, and efficiently organizing members to buy inputs demand to purchase inputs, and sell off harvests. and sell outputs. What are Farmer Management Solutions? Farmer management solutions are digitally enabled applications operated by a farmer group, cooperative, or related agribusiness (e.g., buyer, seller, service provider). These solutions provide farmer groups with a range of services that vary in complexity, but are typically built upon a database that holds basic information on individual farms or households. These data typically include their identification, location, plot size, contact information, a list of the crops they grow, and sometimes more detailed information such as their yield or loan history and the variety of seeds they use. Depending on the services a farmer group provides to its members, the solution may also collect group-level information such as services used by members, products sold by the group, inputs purchased, loans made, yields across farmers, and information on input providers and buyers. At the beginning of the pandemic, stay-at-home orders began quickly and with little notice. This left little time for farmer groups and agribusinesses to equip farmers with the information they needed to continue farm production and access services. Farmer management solutions allowed these organizations to quickly contact and organize farmers, while enabling remote access to services. How Do Farmer Management Solutions Work? Farmer management solutions have various capabilities. First, they allow members to sort farmers by different characteristics, such as location or crops grown. This allows the farmers to receive information, such as advisory services, market prices, or weather updates sourced from a third party that are unique to their specific profile. The solutions are also used to manage services provided by the farmer group or agribusiness, such as aggregating input orders or yields, facilitating buyer arrangements, and providing access to mechanization, storage, and transportation. Another key component is that farmer management solutions can be used to facilitate the delivery of financial services such as loans or crop insurance from the farmer group itself or from a financial services provider. Farmer management solutions vary by who owns and operates the application, how the solution is designed, and whether the group works with field agents. Many farmer management solutions are used directly by field agents who deliver services and are responsible for updating farmers’ information in the system. Also, some solutions have modules that allow farmers to directly input their own information and view their farm data through a linked smartphone application. Farmer management solutions owned and operated by agribusinesses that buy from, sell to, or provide services to farmers are the most common. Some of these solutions are built on core software, such as Dimagi’s CommCare or Taroworks, which operates through field agents. Farmer management solutions operated by farmer groups themselves without donor support are relatively rare due to sustainability challenges related to FEED THE FUTURE 2 FARMER MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS financing, operations and maintenance. However, groups can use a growing number of low-cost digital tools, such as templates for shared spreadsheets, shared digital file capabilities, and mapping applications. Two examples of farmer-owned and operated farmer management solutions, both fostered by USAID Feed the Future projects, are noted in the illustrative examples below. Why Should You Consider Farmer Management Solutions? Smallholder farmers can gain many benefits from having direct or indirect access to a farmer management solution. Depending on the range of “It is important to avoid the modules available, member farmers can efficiently access time-sensitive development of “black box” solutions updates and alerts, receive extension services, find better inputs, and whereby producers are passive users. Instead, systems should be developed reach existing and new customers. As a group, farmers can efficiently that facilitate access to their [the access mechanization and other services, such as post-harvest processing, producers’] own data and thus storage, and transportation, and reduce crop loss. Farmers can even develop their capacity for analysis…” (Data Driven Agriculture, USAID collectively negotiate higher prices for their goods by using the solution Feed the Future Senegal Nataal to meet buyers’ demands for volume purchases, handle transactions Mbay, Cereal Value Chains, 2019, faster, and take advantage of group storage or transport. They may also p. 11.) be able to increase their earnings by using the solution to introduce good agricultural practices and identify buyers willing to pay a premium for quality and timeliness. Finally, some farmer management solutions track a farmer’s yield history, which can be used as one factor to help determine creditworthiness. This in turn can increase farmers’ access to financial services needed to manage a household between crop cycles, withstand unforeseen pandemic-related disruptions, and maintain resilience to shocks. A farmer management solution can increase resilience because it can deliver information to help farmers quickly address unanticipated challenges (such as about closed borders or markets) and facilitate actions to solve problems related to accessing inputs, services, customers, or emergency aid. These benefits can lead to reduced costs and increased productivity for individual farmers. For example, aggregating demand for inputs can lower costs and even increase productivity, since input providers have a stronger incentive to make timely deliveries for optimal application of inputs aligned with the crop cycle, improving the precision of agronomic practices that can lead to higher yields. In the context of COVID-19, farmer management solutions were also used to disseminate accurate information about the pandemic and combat misinformation and disinformation. For example, Farmerline in Ghana leveraged its solution to quickly disseminate COVID-19 facts to farmers, while also disbursing credit to its input suppliers. Further, during the pandemic, the Senegal Farmer Network quickly provided information to members on government financial aid and informed members how to partially shift to growing crops that could feed families when markets were hard to reach. When Are Farmer Management Solutions Likely Not the Right Fit? As in all digital interventions, Missions and implementing partners must carefully determine whether factors such as limited access to and use of mobile phones, poor digital literacy, lack of trust in digital tools, laws or regulations, or other social constraints may negatively affect the impact of these farmer management solutions. If, for example, mobile phone coverage is poor, many member farmers will not be able to reap the anticipated benefits. In this case, a farmer management solution may not be appropriate. However, to address these factors, the solution can adapt to incorporate digitally enabled agents or extension officers, or include offline capabilities that allow farmers to use the solution even when not connected to a network. FEED THE FUTURE 3 FARMER MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS What Are Some of the Potential Risks and Pitfalls of Farmer Management Solutions? Farmer management solutions come with some potential risks. If governed poorly, the group’s management can use the solution for its own gains, benefiting from pricing and market information while members’ benefits are diminished or nil. With much of a farmer’s data in digital form, data rights and data privacy could be violated, especially if the farmer or service provider does not understand how to protect their data. Finally, if a solution is adopted with donor funding without a viable plan for financial and organizational sustainability beyond a funded project, it may be abandoned, meaning the investment of time and effort in such a system—as well as the data— may be lost. Illustrative Examples • Senegal Farmer Networks: This program supports 150,000 producers through field agents and database managers. It provides a wide range of services, including advice, aggregation of inputs and outputs, mechanization services, and access to finance. A digitally enabled farmer management solution, the program was facilitated by USAID Feed the Future Senegal’s (FTF) Nataal Mbay Cereal Value Chains Project. It combines—among other components—simple Microsoft Excel templates, software to map plots, and a third-party weather service. See the reference list for more on this solution. • OB Networks of Ghana: This network includes 10 outbuyer farmer networks,
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